The U.S. market is heading into October on a high note. Sadly, Europe trails behind and things are pretty quiet. Asia has plenty of gaps to fill but holidays and typhoons will cause a postponement. U.S. Gulf Business is warming up in the U.S. Gulf for October. There is scarcely a single route that is not tight on space for September or October and rates are looking quite firm in certain directions. The usual response would be that an outsider could be slotted on berth, but the pool of ships t...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Handheld outdoor power equipment sales are around $15 billion in the U.S., which allows for a correspondingly large – but possibly not fully exploited – market for high-performance lubricants, according to Infineum. Pat Fetterman, account manager of sales for Infineum, pointed this out during the Infineum Trends 50th anniversary presentation at the Petroleum Packaging Councils fall meeting. This year marks the first time that the overview has included the ha...

Lubrication equipment maker Gits Manufacturing announced last week that it will lay off 78 employees by June 2014 and move its Iowa production to Mexico and China. A representative from Gits Manufacturings parent company, Actuant Corporation, told Lube Report that it will fold Gits headquarters in Creston, Iowa, and move around 15 people to its product innovation center in Urbandale, Iowa. Actuant will lay off the remaining 78 Gits employees in five stages from November 2013 to June 2014. It wil...

Swiss lubricant company Strub opened a subsidiary in Russia to expand its operation in the region, the company said last week. The company’s office is located in St. Petersburg, and it will manage direct sales and distribution for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, according to Strub. Our goal is to better penetrate the East European market. We see Russia as a potential consumer for custom-made lubricants and technical cleaners, the company said in its Sept. 20 press release. [With ...

Engineered Custom Lubricants acquired Lubricant Technology Inc. and its Christo-Lube brand of synthetic lubes last month for an undisclosed price. ECL plans to expand LTIs three-acre fluorinate chemicals plant in Franklin Furnace, Ohio, where it develops, manufactures, and markets the Christo-Lube brand. LTI formulates the synthetic lubricant from fluorinated polysiloxanes, perfluoropolyethers, esters polyalphaolefins (PAOs), and synthetic hydrocarbon co-oligomers for high-temperature and highly...

Pinto Energy on Monday said it plans to begin building a 2,800 barrels per day gas-to-liquids plant in Ashtabula, Ohio, in the first half of 2014, with startup scheduled for early 2016. It will convert abundant low-cost natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale region into high value specialty products (solvents, lubricants and waxes), as well as ultra clean transportation fuels, Houston-based Pinto Energy said in a news release Monday. The company is a developer of smaller scale GTL facil...

U.S. quick lubes data showed a higher average daily number of oil changes but lower average total cars per day, along with an uptick in yearly sales per store versus a drop in net profits, National Oil & Lube News reported. For the 2013 edition of its Fast Lube Operators Survey, published in its September issue, NOLN collected responses from 4,414 facilities representing all 50 states. As usual, the survey asked for metrics regarding quick lubes operations, prices, demographics, employees, ...